The previous post argued that images should not be understood as languages.
Visual semiosis participates in the same general semiotic architecture as language, but it does not possess a lexicogrammatical stratum. Consequently, the goal of visual analysis cannot be the discovery of visual equivalents of words, clauses, sentences, or grammatical structures.
This conclusion, however, immediately raises a more difficult question.
If visual semiosis possesses a content plane but not a grammar, what exactly constitutes visual content?
The question may appear straightforward.
In practice, it turns out to be remarkably difficult.
Indeed, many of the persistent problems in visual analysis arise precisely because the distinction between content and expression becomes blurred.
The Pull of Expression
One reason for this difficulty is obvious enough.
Visual expression is immediately available.
We can see colours, shapes, textures, spatial arrangements, contrasts, boundaries, and countless other visual features.
Content, by contrast, is not directly visible.
As a result, visual analysis often begins with expression and remains there.
The analyst identifies a visible feature and then attributes meaning to it.
Blue may signify tranquillity.
Red may signify danger.
A vertical arrangement may signify power.
A diagonal arrangement may signify movement.
The pattern is familiar.
Visible form is treated as the starting point, and meaning is inferred from it.
From a Hallidayan perspective, however, this procedure reverses the explanatory direction.
Expression is not the phenomenon that explains.
Expression is the phenomenon that requires explanation.
The task is not to determine what visible forms mean.
The task is to understand what meanings are being realised through visible forms.
Meaning Is Not Colour
Consider a simple example.
Suppose an analyst claims that blue signifies tranquillity.
The claim may be plausible.
But what exactly has been identified?
Has a meaning been identified?
Or has an expressive resource been associated with a meaning?
The distinction matters.
Blue belongs to expression.
Tranquillity belongs to content.
To say that blue means tranquillity risks collapsing the distinction between them.
The problem becomes clearer when we consider alternatives.
Tranquillity may be realised through blue.
But it may also be realised through:
muted contrast
soft boundaries
spatial openness
balanced composition
reduced visual density
or numerous other expressive resources.
The meaning remains recognisable while the expression changes.
This suggests that the content cannot be identified with any particular expressive form.
Content must therefore be understood independently of the expression that realises it.
The Priority of Content
At this point the methodological significance of the view from above becomes apparent.
If visual semiosis possesses a content plane, then content must become the primary object of theoretical investigation.
This does not mean ignoring expression.
Expression remains indispensable.
Without expression, there is no realised meaning.
The point is rather that expression should be approached through content rather than content through expression.
Instead of asking:
What does this colour mean?
we ask:
What meaning distinctions are being realised through this colour?
Instead of asking:
What does this compositional arrangement signify?
we ask:
What content values are being realised through this arrangement?
The difference may appear modest.
In reality, it changes the entire direction of inquiry.
Content as Meaning Potential
A further complication arises once visual content is approached from the perspective of instantiation.
The content plane is not simply a collection of meanings attached to particular images.
Like every semiotic resource, visual content exists as a potential.
Particular images actualise selections from that potential.
Consequently, the content plane should not be understood as a catalogue of interpretations.
It should be understood as a system of meaning possibilities.
This distinction is crucial.
When analysts assign meanings directly to visible forms, they often move immediately from expression to instance.
A particular colour is observed and a particular interpretation is assigned.
The underlying potential remains invisible.
A systemic-functional account proceeds differently.
The task is to reconstruct the system of meaning distinctions that makes particular visual instances intelligible.
Again, explanation proceeds from above.
The Problem of Representation
At this point an objection often arises.
Surely images depict things.
Surely visual content consists simply of what is represented.
A photograph of a tree depicts a tree.
A portrait depicts a person.
A map depicts a landscape.
Is that not visual content?
The difficulty is that representation alone cannot account for meaning.
Two photographs may depict the same tree while realising very different meanings.
Two portraits may depict the same person while establishing radically different interpersonal relations.
Two maps may depict the same terrain while organising information in entirely different ways.
Representation contributes to meaning.
It does not exhaust it.
Visual content therefore cannot be reduced to what an image depicts.
The content plane concerns the semiotic organisation of meaning, not merely the identification of represented objects.
Towards a Theory of Visual Meaning
What, then, constitutes visual content?
At this stage of the discussion, a complete answer would be premature.
The purpose of this post is not to provide a finished taxonomy of visual meanings.
Rather, it is to establish the theoretical problem.
Visual semiosis possesses a content plane.
That content plane cannot be reduced to expression.
Nor can it be reduced to representation.
It consists of meaning potential realised through visual expression and actualised in visual instances.
The challenge is to determine how that potential is organised.
Fortunately, Systemic Functional Linguistics already provides a powerful clue.
Meaning is not organised randomly.
It is organised metafunctionally.
The next post therefore turns to the metafunctional organisation of visual semiosis. If visual content constitutes meaning potential, how is that potential organised ideationally, interpersonally, and textually?
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